My friend Tessa and I were having an on-line discussion about cake, as you do. She had just finished the mammoth task of baking (and was partway through the delicious task of eating) a Ten Layer Russian Burnt Honey Cake, with frosted layers of condensed milk and whipped cream topped with burnt caramel crumbs. For someone with a bakery-tooth like me, the photo of it was pure straight-from-the-oven porn.
Tessa was saying how lockdown led her to cake-making adventures, which ranged from buying miniature Bundt tins, to baking the ten layers of sweet-tooth bliss, and then inviting far-flung family and friends (some flung as far away as heaven), to assemble for taste testing. I love the idea of wishfully-thought guests having an imaginary kitchen tea party.
All this mouth-watering talk made me evaluate my own bake-my-way-out-of-a-crisis default setting, because when dire straits loom, I stock the freezer. Chocolate orange cake and banana bread, cheese scones, marmalade loaf and jam roly-poly. Knowing comforting fare is lurking among the frozen peas is sustenance in itself. When we got married I baked my wedding cake, and then I baked my wedding reception, with scones and clotted cream and jam, and enough cake to feed an army. Dainty canapes are SO not me. With all the emotion my wedding brought, following a recipe in the kitchen became my ten-step programme to calm. I regained my composure with the rhythmic ritual of beating air into eggs and sifting my flour.
Maybe it’s a Jewish thing, or maybe it’s just a woman thing untainted by race, but at the first sniff of crisis I head to the kitchen. Lockdown became bakedown, chemotherapy became cookotherapy and recuperation became recookeration. When I left my first marriage I took my horse, my cats, my collection of Victorian photograph albums and some (very mumsy) clothes that I never wore again. I later snuck back when I knew the house was empty and retrieved my baking tins. As far as I could recall, in fifteen years of marriage my then-husband had never baked a thing, but being pan-less left him distraught. More distraught than being wife-less. Another transgression to add to my unreasonable behaviour. And adultery. And cancer.
Cooking is for sharing, but baking is for giving. I once spent a pleasant hour with the psychotherapist exploring why I rarely bake for myself, and at the next session I took her a lemon drizzle cake. Cake currency is like that, it’s both a Please and a Thankyou, but most often it’s a Just Because. Baking a cake is never a chore, just like eating one is never unpleasant, because homemade cake has equal parts flour eggs sugar and fat, but most part love; it’s the love that gives them their rise, and sometimes their fall, but most of all their ability to please.
My kitchen is not gadgety, some would say it’s positively archaic. My pride-and-joy is an original seventies orange Kenwood mixer which belonged to the mother of a dear friend, and was an overwhelmingly generous birthday gift. The kitchen has a reclaimed white stone butler sink, floor-to-ceiling dresser which is original to the 1879 house, a scrub-top pine table bought for £10 in a junk shop in 1978, and an oil-fired Rayburn range cooker, which is an Aga’s poor relation. I have the joy of a walk-in larder with enough room for the fridge-freezer and microwave, and shelves to store drinking glasses and Tupperware. My kitchen doubles as craft space, sewing space, office space and cat refuge. It’s also provided warm refuge for poorly hens who needed a little TLC.
Despite the words in the manufacturer’s cookbook, the Rayburn does limit cake baking to more robust confections. It excels at puddings tarts and pies, fruit cakes and cookies are divine, but Swiss roll and light sponge cakes have a pudding-y demeanour which you either learn to love or stop baking them. The warming oven is perfect for overnight meringues. Macarons, and anything with a hint of patisserie are too precise for the rather pedestrian temperature gauge, and a southwesterly wind blowing down the chimney damps-down proceedings entirely.
My baking repertoire consists of Mark’s favourites, and childhood memories- not so much things my mother made, because she hated baking anything apart from flourless Plava cake at Passover, and Baked Alaska for a special dessert, but reminiscences of the shakily-iced efforts I conjured up in our blue-and-white kitchen with pet dogs Danny and Lulu sleeping under the table. Chocolate fairy cakes sprinkled with hundreds-and-thousands, and buttercream filled butterfly cakes topped with pink jelly-tots. That kitchen had a walk-in larder too, and a proper Aga cooker. I loved Domestic Science classes at school, and still make pastry the way Mrs. Staunton taught us. I’ve never dared to see what happens if you flour the pastry instead of the board, it would be committing a cardinal sin.
I often dream of the gateaux I would create, and the things I could do with tempered chocolate if I had more workspace, or an oven that hadn’t been fitted without first levelling the floor; leaning cakes are my speciality. But it’s not eye-candy I’m after, it’s the comfort of a loving mouthful. Of giving something, feeding someone with the added gift of love. Although I have to confess, baking a ten-layer version of that gift is definitely food for thought . . .
P.S. who would you invite for your imaginary cake taste-testing party?
a horse, a husband, and cancer 
Of course I love this! I have, like so many, recently been obsessed with the Great British Bake Off. In February, when I was able to travel before we all got stuck at home, I was in places that allowed me to see the first two seasons that we for some reason can’t get in the US. I think I’ve watched every season that I can see here at least three times. I tried watching The Great Canadian Baking Show recently, but I realized that at least half of what I love about the GBBO is listening to people with British accents talk about baking. I have no idea what hundreds and thousands are, and I keep meaning to look up fairy cake, and your oven definitely sounds like something out of a novel to me, but it all adds to the delight of reading an already delightful read.
I would have gone back to get the baking pans too.
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hundreds-and-thousands = sprinkles, Tessa, and fairy cakes are just individual sponge cakes, like cupcakes.
GBBO was a great show until Mary Berry left and then it flopped, but I loved watching it too. You’d have done well with your 10-layer showstopper!
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Years ago a friend complained to me that her mother was always baking me one of her amazing rum cakes…she asked how I got her to do it. “I asked her to?” It took a while to figure where I belonged in the world. I am an excellent cook with a skill for baking. My apple pie is legendary but I can honestly say I’ve never had a happy moment cooking. Never. Not one. I try to appease myself by remembering that my mother hated to cook but she was also bad at it. Some generational improvement but not liking to cook does take some taste away. I found a sweet peace discovering my love of praising others for their culinary skills. I have never considered watching a cooking show, but will joyously moan and groan over a small cookie. I offer myself as the perfect tea party guest. (Elaine, a treat to read, as well.)
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your offer was pre-empted Anna, you were already on the list and there would be a good supply of olives to keep you fed until the others arrived. Did you ever think I would do it without you?
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Without doubt it would be my maternal Grandma, she was a phenomenal baker and I like to think that I inherited at least some of her enthusiasm, if not her skills.
She went into service at the age of 12 as you did in those days, starting off her working career as an assistant to the cook of the house and gradually worked her way up the household ladder to take over from said cook. Apparently when Grandma finally handed her notice in so that she could marry my Grandad, because goodness knows you couldn’t be married and work for a living, the lady of the house was inconsolable and lamented for some length over who exactly was going to provide her with afternoon tea now!
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Lainey, my grandma had exactly the same experience! She married grandpa when he was the chauffeur of the family for whom they worked. She was a fantastic cook all her life but her kitchen was so basic, one cold water tap, zero counter space! She died in 1959 aged 71.
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I love the sound of your grandma JanF, and that you found common ground with Lainey.
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What a coincidence Jan, my Grandad was the son of the local coal merchant and they met when he did the deliveries, eyes meeting across a coal sack so to speak.
She was an excellent cook Elaine, one of my earliest memories was standing next to her in the kitchen watching her make scones and her saying to me that you mustn’t over handle the mixture or they would be tough, advice I still follow today.
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if I’d been that lady of the house I think I’d lament too, at the loss of a brilliant cook. Your grandma sounds lovely, I bet she cooked your grandad some fine meals.
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What time is tea? Will we use the good China?
I would like to bake an angle food cake with my aunt Bobbie beating air into egg whites with a fork as she did. She also had rudimentary tools and created such wonderful meals. Specialties that I have recreated over the years for people I want to show my love to. She used a wood burning stove in her Arizona ranch kitchen , and a cast iron pan to make the best chicken fried steak and milk gravy with pan drippings to ladle generously over mashed potatoes and steak.
Over the years cooking has become a creative outlet for me and also a funn challenge when confined to a small galley on a distant sea. Craving tacos while far away from those provisions requires importing masa harina
and a tortilla press and chili arbol. Scottish guests aboard were delighted with making tortillas however not so the fire of the arbol chili’s. We almost killed him! Tequila saved the day, once again.
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Of course we’ll use the best china Kimberley. You may need to bring tequila in case the cakes don’t taste as they should. On second thoughts, bring tequilas anyway!
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This is such a nice piece Elaine
Would love to come visit you in your kitchen one day…sounds precious.xxxx
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how lovely cuz, I’ll look forward to that xx
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